DOUGLAS WORLD CRUISERS
ONE OF the grandest adventures in aviation occurred in 1924 when a trio of U.S. Army Air Service Douglas World Cruisers became the first aeroplanes to circumnavigate the globe. The … Continue reading
THE LYSANDER
IF JAMES Bond were an aeroplane, he’d be a Westland Lysander: tough, powerful, extremely capable in clandestine operations and resolutely British. I trust as well he’d be confident enough in … Continue reading
CURTISS OX-5
THIS PARTICULAR aircraft engine earns being my all-time favorite not because of its power, but through its engineering evolution, its eventual ubiquity—and its wonderfully bizarre valve gear. The engine is … Continue reading
ST. PETE FLIGHTS, REAL AND VIRTUAL, PART 2
MEANWHILE, ACROSS the Atlantic in another St. Petersburg, a Florida businessman named Percival Elliot Fansler approached aeroplane maker Tom Benoist with an intriguing idea. Tampa Bay separated the cities of … Continue reading
ST. PETE FLIGHTS, REAL AND VIRTUAL, PART 1
TWO HIGHLY significant events in aviation history involved the cities of St. Petersburg, one in Russia, the other in Florida. What’s more, they happened within months of each other in … Continue reading
ARTFUL VULTEE BITS
JUST ABOUT every U.S. pilot in World War II trained in a Vultee BT-13 or one of its variants. I share a dual affinity with these aviators, first through friendship … Continue reading
CROSS-COUNTRY TRAVEL TAKES OFF, SORT OF
TRANSCONTINENTAL Air Transport, TAT, for short, initiated the first scheduled coast-to-coast travel on July 7, 1929. Only a portion of the 48-hour trip was by air, but it still beat … Continue reading
CROSS-COUNTRY FLIGHT, TAKE 1
IT’S AMAZING how quickly aviation technology progressed a century ago. The Wrights flew 120 ft. in December 1903, yet by July 1909 Louis Blériot won the London Daily Mail £1000 … Continue reading
ENDEAVOUR 2012, MAIA/MERCURY 1938
CALIFORNIA IS home to a lot of the space industry, and many of us here were wacko about seeing the welcome-home flybys of the Space Shuttle Endeavour atop its Boeing … Continue reading
WHERE’S MY PROP? PART 2
IT WAS disquieting enough when a prop disappeared, as it did in the transition of Saab 21A to 21R (see http://wp.me/p2ETap-dW. Yet in the early days of aviation, there were … Continue reading
